l»    IT 


OUR  RECENT 
DEBTS  to  VIVISECTION 


BY 


WILLIAM  W.  KEEK,  A.M.,  M.  D., 

Professor  of  Surgery,  Woman's  Medical  College  of  Pennsylvania. 


[Reprinted  from  The  Popular  Science  Monthly,  May,  1885.] 


PHILADELPHIA  : 
.    PORTER    AND     COATES, 

1885. 


OUR  RECENT 
DEBTS  TO  VIVISECTION. 


THE  ADDRESS  TO  THE  GRADUATES 

AT    THE 

THIRTY-THIRD   COMMENCEMENT 

OF   THE 

WOMAN'S   MEDICAL    COLLEGE    OF   PENNSYLVANIA, 
MARCH   11,   1885. 


BY 

WILLIAM  W.  KEEN,  A.M.,  M.  D., 

PROFESSOR    OF    SURGERY. 


Reprinted  from  ''The  Popular  Science  Monthly,"    .May,   1885, 
by  request  of  the  class. 


PHILADELPHIA: 
PORTER     &     COATES 

1885. 


,r 


OUR   RECENT   DEBTS   TO  VIVISECTION. 


LADIES  :  It  is  my  happy  privilege  to  congratulate  you  on  the  com- 
pletion of  your  three  years  of  preliminary  study,  and  on  your 
merited  reward  in  receiving  the  degi-ee  of  Doctor  of  Medicine  from 
the  oldest  and  largest  medical  college  for  women  in  the  world. 

By  this  degree  you  are  permitted  to  enter  the  ranks  of  one  of  the 
most  ancient,  honorable,  and  laborious  professions.  With  it  you  as- 
sume certain  valued  privileges,  and  have  cast  upon  you  certain  weighty 
duties.  Both  the  privileges  and  the  duties  will  exact  from  you  all  the 
intelligence,  skill,  tact,  and  faithfulness  which  you  possess. 

You  will  observe  that  I  said  a  moment  since  you  had  finished  your 
"preliminary"  studies;  for  your  first  and  most  pressing  duty  after 
graduation,  and  one  for  which  happily  you  will  at  first  have  ample 
time,  is  to  continue  your  medical  studies.  I  do  not  say  complete  them, 
for,  be  your  lives  even  prolonged  far  past  the  allotted  threescore  and 
ten,  instant,  constant,  intense  study  is  the  imperative  condition  of  the 
right  kind  of  success.  You  know  very  little  now.  Happy  both  you  and 
your  patients,  if  even  with  gray  hairs  comes  ever-growing  knowledge. 

But  you  have  other  duties  than  those  to  self — you  have  great  duties 
to  the  communities  in  which  you  will  live.  Women  especially  will  not 
only  look  to  you  in  times  of  peril,  whether  in  childbirth  or  sickness  or 
accident,  but  also  for  guidance  in  that  greatest  duty  and  privilege — the 
prevention  rather  than  the  cure  of  disease.  This  is  the  glory  of  our 
times  and  the  magnificent  duty  of  our  profession,  that  by  enlightened 
care  and  wise  instruction  we  can  prevent  much  of  the  sickness  and 
sorrow  of  the  race,  and  bid  back  the  Angel  of  Death. 

Hygiene — well  named  after  Hygeia,  the  goddess  of  good  health — 
must  be  one  of  your  principal  future  studies,  and  its  lessons  ever  on 
your  lips  ;  line  upon  line,  precept  upon  precept,  here  a  little;  and  there 
a  great  deal.  The  greatest  need  of  our  College  to-day  is  a  Professor- 
ship of  Hygiene.  Would  that  in  this  vast  audience  some  one  could 
be  found  who  would  endow  such  a  chair  in  the  Woman's  Medical  Col- 
lege of  Pennsylvania  ! 


4  OUR  REGENT  DEBTS   TO    VIVISECTION. 

You  must  also  direct  public  opinion,  arid  especially  the  opinion  of 
your  own  sex,  in  reference  to  medical  questions  ;  for  your  information 
and  studies  will  fit  you  to  be  their  instructors  in  all  such  technical 
questions. 

It  is  to  one  of  these  medical  issues  of  the  day  that  I  purpose  to 
direct  your  attention  at  present — one  as  to  which  intense  feeling,  espe- 
cially among  women,  has  been  aroused — viz.,  the  question  of  experi- 
ments upon  animals. 

Epithets  and  invective  have  been  freely  used,  but,  as  befits  the  audi- 
ence and  the  occasion,  I  shall  endeavor  to  approach  it  in  a  perfectly 
calm  and  fair  spirit,  seeking  to  lay  before  you  only  one  aspect  of  a 
many-sided  question,  viz.,  the  actual  practical  benefits  it  has  conferred 
upon  man  and  animals — a  fact  that  is  constantly  denied,  but  which 
medical  evidence  proves  to  be  incontestable. 

I  shall  not  consider  the  important  older  discoveries  it  has  given  us, 
but  only  those  since  1850,  almost  all  of  which  are  within  my  own  per- 
sonal  recollection.  Even  of  these  I  must  omit  nearly  all  of  its  con- 
tributions to  physiology  and  to  pathology,  though  so  much  of  our 
practice  is  based  upon  these,  and  confine  myself  to  the  advances  it  has 
enabled  us  to  make  in  medical  and  surgical  practice.  I  shall  endeavor 
to  state  its  claims  with  moderation,  for  an  extravagant  claim  always 
produces  a  revulsion  against  the  claimant,  and  is  as  unwise  as  it  is 
unscientific. 

Again,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that,  as  in  nearly  every  other  ad- 
vance in  civilization  and  in  society,  so  in  medicine,  causes  are  1'arely 
single,  but  generally  multiple  and  interwoven.  While  vivisection  has 
been  a  most  potent  factor  in  medical  progress,  it  is  only  one  of  several 
factors  the  disentanglement  of  which  and  the  exact  balancing  of  bow 
much  is  due  to  this  or  to  that  are  often  difficult  and  sometimes  impos- 
sible. Let  me  add  one  word  more.  All  that  I  may  say  is  purely  upon 
my  own  responsibility.  I  commit  the  opinion  of  no  one  else  to  any 
view  or  any  statement  of  fact. 

Medicine  in  the  future  must  either  grow  worse,  stand  still,  or  grow 
better. 

To  grow  worse,  we  must  forget  our  present  knowledge — happily, 
an  inconceivable  idea. 

To  stand  still,  we  must  accept  our  present  knowledge  as  a  finality, 
complacently  pursuing  the  well-worn  paths  ;  neither  hoping  nor  trying 
for  anything  better — happily,  again,  an  impossibility. 

To  grow  better,  we  must  try  new  methods,  give  new  drugs,  per- 
form new  operations,  or  perform  old  ones  in  new  ways  ;  that  is  to  say, 
we  must  make  experiments.  To  these  experiments  there  must  be  a 
beginning  :  they  must  be  tried  first  on  some  living  body,  for  it  is 
often  forgotten  that  the  dead  body  can  only  teach  manual  dexterity. 
They  must  then  be  tried  either  on  an  animal  or  on  you.     Which  shall 


OUR   RECENT  DEBTS    TO    VIVISECTION.  5 

it  be  ?  In  many  cases,  of  course,  which  involve  little  or  no  risk  to  life 
or  health,  it  is  perfectly  legitimate  to  test  probable  improvements  on 
man  first,  although  one  cf  the  gravest  and  most  frequent  charges 
made  against  us  doctors  is  that  we  are  experimenting  upon  our  pa- 
tients. 

But  in  many  cases  they  involve  great  risk  to  life  or  health.  Here 
they  can  not,  nay,  they  must  not,  be  tested  first  upon  man.  Must  we, 
then,  absolutely  forego  them,  no  matter  how  much  of  promise  for  life 
and  health  and  happiness  they  possess  ?  If  not,  the  only  alternative  we 
have  is  to  try  them  on  the  lower  animals,  and  we  would  be  most  unwise, 
nay,  more,  we  would  be  cruel,  cruel  both  to  man  and  to  animals,  if  we 
refused  to  pain  or  even  to  slay  a  few  animals,  that  thousands,  both  of 
men  and  of  animals,  might  live. 

Who  would  think  it  right  to  put  a  few  drops  of  the  hydrochlorate 
of  cocaine  (a  year  ago  almost  an  unknown  drug)  into  the  eye  of  a  man, 
riot  knowing  what  frightful  inflammation  or  even  loss  of  sight  might 
follow  ?  Had  one  dared  to  do  it,  and  had  the  result  been  disastrous, 
would  not  the  law  have  held  him  guilty  and  punished  him  severely, 
and  all  of  us  said  Amen  ?  But  so  did  Christison  with  Calabar  bean, 
and  well-nigh  lost  his  own  life.  So  did  Toynbee  with  prussic  acid  on 
himself,  and  was  found  dead  in  his  laboratory.*     Accordingly,  Roller, 

*  I  add  the  following  striking  extract  from  a  speech  in  defense  of  vivisection,  on 
April  4,  18S3,  by  Sir  Lyon  Playfair,  deputy  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Commons — no  mean 
authority.     The  italics  arc  my  own : 

"  For  myself,  although  formerly  a  professor  of  chemistry  in  the  greatest  medical 
school  of  this  country,  I  am  only  responsible  for  the  death  of  two  rabbits  by  poison,  and 
I  ask  the  attention  of  the  House  to  the  case  as  a  strong  justification  for  experiments  on 
animals,  and  yet  I  should  have  been  treated  as  a  criminal  under  the  present  act  had  it  then 
•existed.  Sir  James  Simpson,  who  introduced  chloroform — that  great  alleviator  of  animal 
suffering — was  then  alive  and  in  constant  quest  of  new  anaesthetics.  lie  came  to  my 
laboratory  one  day  to  see  if  I  had  any  new  substances  likely  to  suit  his  purpose.  I 
showed  him  a  liquid  which  had  just  been  discovered  by  one  of  my  assistants,  and  Sir 
James  Simpson,  who  was  bold  to  rashness  in  experimenting  on  himself,  desired  immedi- 
ately to  inhale  it  in  my  private  room.  I  refused  to  give  him  any  of  the  liquid  unless  it 
•was  first  tried  upon  labbits.  Two  rabbits  were  accordingly  made  to  inhale  it;  they 
quickly  passed  into  anaesthesia  and  apparently  as  quickly  recovered,  but  from  an  after- 
action of  the  poison  they  both  died  a  few  hours  afterward.  Now,  was  not  this  a  justifi- 
able experiment  upon  animals  ?  Was  not  the  sacrifice  of  two  rabbits  north  saving  the  life 
of  the  most  distinguished  physician  of  Ids  lime  ?  .  .  .  Would  that  an  experiment  of  a  like' 
kind  on  a  rabbit  or  a  Guinea-pig  had  been  used  by  John  Hunter,  who  probably  shortened 
his  own  noble  life  by  experimenting  on  himself!  .  .  . 

"Let  mo  give  one  other  instance.  ...  A  few  years  ago  two  young  German  chemists 
were  assistants  in  a  London  laboratory.  They  were  experimenting  upon  a  poison  which  I 
wili  not  even  name,  for  its  properties  are  so  terrible.  It  is  postponed  in  its  action,  and 
then  produces  idiocy  or  death.  A  experiment  on  a  mouse  or  a  rabbit  would  have  taught 
them  the  danger  of  this  frightful  poison  ;  but,  in  ignorance  of  its  subtle  properties,  they 
became  its  unhappy  victims,  for  one  died  and  the  other  suffered  intellectual  death.  Yet 
the  promoters  of  this  bill  would  not  suffer  us  to  make  any  experiments  on  the  lower  ani- 
mals so  as  to  protect  man  from  such  catastrophes.     It  is  by  experiments  on  animals  that 


6  OUR  RECENT  DEBTS    TO    VIVISECTION. 

of  Vienna,  properly  and  wisely  tried  cocaine  first  on  animals,*  and  then, 
finding  its  beneficial  effects,  tried  it  upon  man  with  like  results,  and 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  drugs  of  modern  times  was  thus  made 
available.  We  are  only  on  the  threshold  of  its  usefulness.  It  has 
been  used  in  the  eye,  the  ear,  the  nose,  the  mouth,  the  larynx  and  all 
other  mucous  membranes,  in  the  removal  of  tumors,  and  as  an  internal 
medicine.  When  its  physiological  action  has  been  still  more  thor- 
oughly and  systematically  investigated,  its  poisonous  dose  ascertained, 
when  we  know  how  it  works,  what  its  effects  are  upon  the  blood-press- 
ure, the  heart,  the  nerves,  the  blood-vessels — effects  that  can  not  be 
accurately  studied  upon  man — its  usefulness  may  be  increased  to  an 
extent  as  yet  but  little  dreamed  of.  Should  it  only  soothe  the  last 
painful  hours  of  our  great  hero,  General  Grant,  a  nation  will  bless  it 
and  the  experiments  which  gave  it  effect.  Moreover,  had  the  experi- 
ments of  Dr.  Isaac  Ott,  of  Easton,  f  on  this  very  drug,  borne  their  due 
fruit,  America  would  have  had  the  honor  and  the  human  race  the  bene- 
fits of  cocaine  ten  years  ago — ten  years  of  needless  suffering  ! 

This  is  but  one  illustration  of  the  value  of  experiments  upon  ani- 
mals in  the  realm  of  new  drugs.  In  fact,  substitute  for  cocaine  other 
drugs,  or  new  operations,  or  new  methods  of  medical  ti'eatment,  and 
the  argument  repeats  itself  for  each.  Within  the  last  thirty  years  a 
multitude  of  new  drugs  have  thus  been  discovered,  and  their  effects 
have  been  either' first  tested  upon  animals,  or  their  properties  studied 
exhaustively  in  a  manner  impracticable  upon  man.  I  will  only  enu- 
merate some  of  them,  since  time  will  not  allow  me  to  enter  upon  each  in 
detail.  Thus  have  been  introduced  lily-of-the-valley  in  heart-disease, 
yellow  jasmine,  in  diseases  of  the  heart  and  nervous  system,  paralde- 
hyde and  chloral-hydrate,  so  valuable  for  sleep,  caffeine  for  headache, 
eucalyptus  as  an  antiseptic  and  in  medicine,  nitro-glycerine  for  nervous 
maladies,  Calabar  bean  for  diseases  of  the  eye  and  nervous  system, 
naphthaline  and  iodoform  in  surgery,  quebracho  as  an  antispasmodic, 
antipyrin  and  kairin  in  fever,  jaborandi  in  dropsy,  salicylic  acid  in 
rheumatism,  nitrite  of  amyl  in  epilepsy  and  intermittent  fever,  jequir- 
ity  in  ophthalmic  surgery,  piscidia  as  a  substitute  for  opium,  the  hypo- 
dermic method  of  usino-  drills,  and  so  on  through  a  loner  list.  And, 
as  to  the  old  drugs,  it  may  be  truly  said  that  we  have  little  exact,  that 
is  scientific,  knowledge  of  any  one  except  through  experiments  upon 
animals.  \ 

medicine  has  learned  the  benefits,  but  also  has  been  taught  to  avoid  the  dangers  of  many 
potent  drugs — as  chloroform,  chloral,  and  morphia." 

*  "Archives  of  Ophthalmology,"  September  and  December,  1884,  p.  402,  New  York, 
Putnams. 

f  Ott,  "  Cocain,  Veratrin,  and  Gelscmium,"  Philadelphia,  1874. 

%  For  three  hundred  years  digitalis,  for  instance,  has  been  given  as  a  depressant  of 
the  heart,  and,  when  a  student,  I  was  taught  to  avoid  it  carefully  when  the  heart  was 
weak.     But  the  accurate  experiments  of  Bernard  and  others  have  shown  that  it  is,  on  the 


OUR   RECENT  DEBTS    TO    VIVISECTION.  7 

Let  us  see  now  something  of  what  America  has  done  in  advancing 
practical  medicine  by  vivisection.  In  passing,  I  may  say  that  the 
assei'tion  that  America  has  contributed  but  little,  so  far  from  being  an 
argument  for  the  restriction  of  vivisection,  is  a  strong  argument  for 
its  further  cultivation,  in  order  that  greater  good  may  result  from 
remarkable  discoveries  here,  equal  to  those  that  I  shall  shoAv  have 
been  made  in  Europe. 

Wounds  of  the  abdomen,  especially  gunshot-wounds,  are  among 
the  most  fatal  injuries  known  to  surgery.  A  small,  innocent-looking, 
external  pistol-wound  may  cover  multiple  and  almost  inevitably  fatal 
perforations  of  the  abdominal  contents.  The  recoveries  from  3,717 
such  wounds  during  the  late  civil  war  only  numbered  444,  and  of 
those  with  escape  of  the  intestinal  contents  the  recoveries,  says  Otis, 
may  be  counted  on  one's  fingers.  The  prevailing  treatment  as  laid  down 
in  our  text-books  has  been  purely  conservative,  treating  symptoms  as 
they  arise.  The  brilliant  results  achieved  in  other  abdominal  opei'a- 
tions  have  led  a  few  bold  spirits,  such  as  our  own  Sims,  Gross,  Otis, 
McGuire,  and  others,  to  advocate  the  opening  of  the  abdomen  and  the 
repair  of  the  injuries  found. 

In  May  of  last  year,  Parkes,  of  Chicago,  reported  to  the  American 
Medical  Association  *  a  series  of  systematic  experiments  on  thirty-seven 
dogs,  that  were  etherized,  then  shot,  the  abdomen  opened,  and  the 
wounds  of  the  intestines,  arteries,  mesentery,  etc.,  treated  by  appro- 
priate surgical  methods.  The  results  confirmed  the  belief  awakened 
by  earlier  experiments  and  observations  that  surgery  could  grapple 
successfully  with  multiple  and  formidable  wounds,  by  sewing  them 
up  in  various  ways,  or  even  by  removing  a  piece  of  the  boAvel  and 
uniting  the  cut  ends.  Hard  upon  the  heels  of  this  important  paper, 
and  largely  as  its  result,  comes  a  striking  improvement  in  practice. 
And  remember,  that  this  is  only  the  first  fruit  of  a  rich  harvest  for 
future  time,  in  all  countries,  in  peace  and  in  war. 

November  2d,  of  last  year,  a  man  was  brought  to  the  Chambers 
Street  Hospital,  in  New  York,  with  a  pistol-shot  wound  in  the  abdo- 
men.    Under  careful  antiseptic  precautions,  and  following  the  indica- 


■contrary,  actually  a  heart  tonic  and  stimulant.  So  long  as  I  live  I  shall  never  forget  the 
intense  joy  of  myself  and  the  agonized  parents,  when  one  bright  young  life  was  brought 
back  from  the  very  grave,  some  five  years  ago,  by  the  knowledge  of  this  fact,  and  this  is 
but  one  of  many  such  cases.  Thus  have  the  action  and  dangers  of  our  common  anaesthet- 
ics been  positively  and  accurately  ascertained ;  thus  the  action  of  ergot  on  the  blood- 
vessels, explaining  alike  its  danger  as  an  article  of  food  and  its  wonderful  use  in  certain 
tumors  of  the  uterus  and  diseases  of  the  nervous  centers  ;  thus,  too,  every  one  who  gives 
opium  in  its  various  forms  is  a  debtor  to  Bernard,  and  every  one  who  gives  strychnine  a 
disciple  of  Magendie. 

*  "Medical  News,"  May  17,  1S84.  I  shall  refer  readers  frequently  to  this  journal,  as 
it  is  often  more  accessible  than  foreign  journals,  and  it  will  refer  them  to  the  original, 
papers. 


8  OUR  RECENT  DEBTS   TO    VIVISECTION. 

tions  of  Partes,  the  abdomen  was  opened  by  Dr.  Bull,*  coil  after  coil 
of  the  intestines  was  drawn  out,  the  bullet  was  found  and  removed,, 
and  seven  wounds  of  the  intestines  were  successively  discovered  and 
properly  treated,  and  the  patient  made  an  uninterrupted  recovery.  A 
recovery,  after  so  many  wounds,  any  one  of  which  would  necessarily 
have  been  fatal  under  the  old  methods  of  treatment,  shows  that  we 
have  now  entered  upon  a  proper  and  successful  method  of  treatment 
for  such  frightful  accidents. 

This  is  but  one  of  the  remarkable  achievements  of  late  years  in 
abdominal  surgery.  The  spleen  has  been  removed,  part  of  the  stom- 
ach has  been  cut  out  for  cancer,  part  of  the  bladder  has  been  dissected 
away,  the  entire  gall-bladder  has  been  removed,  and  several  inches  of 
the  intestine  have  been  cut  out,  all  with  the  most  remarkable  success. 
To  all  of  these,  experiments  upon  animals  have  either  led  the  way,  or 
have  taught  us  better  methods.  To  recite  each  in  detail  would  oc- 
cupy too  much  time,  but  one  illustration  I  must  not  omit,  for  the 
improvement,  produced  by  it  and  other  experiments,  affects  every 
abdominal  operation.  When  I  was  a  student,  the  peritonaeum  was- 
avoided  by  knife  and  needle  wherever  possible.  After  the  death  of 
his  fourth  case  of  ovariotomy,  Mr.  (now  Sir  Spencer)  Wells,  f  in  making 
the  post-mortem,  was  led  to  believe  that  the  then  received  treatment 
of  the  peritonaeum  was  incorrect,  and  that  he  ought  to  bring  its  sur- 
faces in  contact  in  order  to  obtain  secure  union.  Accordingly,  instead 
of  testing  his  ideas  upon  women,  he  experimented  upon  a  few  dogs,, 
and  found  that  his  suspicions  were  correct.  Since  then  it  has  been 
accepted  as  a  cardinal  point  in  all  abdominal  operations.  Following 
this  came  improvements  in  the  ligatures  used,  in  the  method  of  treat- 
ing the  pedicle,  in  the  use  of  antiseptics,  etc.,  all  more  or  less  the 
result  of  experiments  upon  animals,  and  what  are  the  results?  Tak- 
ing successive  hundreds  of  cases,  Sir  Spencer  Wells's  percentage  of 
mortality  has  decreased  steadily  from  thirty-four  per  cent  to  eleven 
per  cent.  In  1,000  operations  he  has  saved  TOO  women  from  the  grave 
and  added  a  net  gain  of  17,880  years  to  human  life,  to  say  nothing  of 
the  happiness  of  the  thousands  related  to  them  by  ties  of  friendship 
and  of  blood — a  proud  boast  indeed  ! 

Since  then,  others  have  reduced  the  percentage  of  deaths  after 
ovariotomy  to  three  in  the  hundred  ;  and  Martin,  of  Berlin,  has  lost 
but  one  patient  from  blood-poisoning  in  his  last  130  cases. 

It  can  not  be  claimed,  of  course,  as  to  all  this  wonderful  history  of 
abdominal  surgery — and  remember  that  in  1862,  when  I  was  a  medical 
student,  I  heard  ovariotomists  denounced  from  a  professor's  chair  as- 
murderers  ! — that  experiments  upon  animals  have  done  the  whole 
work.     No  one  man,  no  one  series  of  experiments  has  sufficed,  and 

*  "  Medical  News,"  February  14,  1885. 

f  Wells,  "Ovarian  and  Uterine  Tumors,"'  1*82,  p.  197. 


OUR  RECENT  DEBTS   TO    VIVISECTION.  9 

experiment  alone  would  not  have  done  it.  But  had  such  experiments 
not  been  made  on  animals,  as  to  the  peritonaeum,  the  pedicle,  the  su- 
tures, the  ligatures,  etc.,  we  should  he  far  behind  where  we  now  are, 
and  still  be  ignorantly  sacrificing  human  life  and  causing  human  suf- 
fering. 

But  to  return  to  America.  The  first  condition  to  successful  treat- 
ment is  an  accurate  knowledge  of  what  any  disease  is — its  cause  and 
its  course — then  we  may  guide  it,  and  in  due  time,  it  may  be,  cure  it. 

Before  Dr.  H.  C.  Wood's*  accurate  experiments  on  the  effects  of 
heat  on  animals,  the  nature  and  effects  of  sunstroke  were  almost  mat- 
ters of  mere  conjecture.  Every  one  had  his  own  theory,  and  the  treat- 
ment was  equally  varied.  Even  the  heat-effects  of  fever  itself — the 
commonest  of  all  symptoms  of  disease — were  ill  understood.  Wood 
exposed  animals  to  temperatures  of  120°  to  130°  Fahr.  and  studied  the 
effects.  These  experiments  have  often  been  alluded  to  as  "baking 
animals  alive."  You  will  note  that  the  heat  was  no  greater  than  that 
to  which  laborers  are  frequently  exposed  in  our  hot  summer-days, 
when  working  in  the  sun  or  in  man}'  industrial  works.  His  experi- 
ments shov/ed  that  the  effects  of  sunstroke — or,  as  he  happily  termed 
it,  Thermic  or  heat  fever,  a  scientific  name  now  widely  adopted — were 
solely  due  to  the  heat,  death  following  from  coagulation  of  the  muscu- 
lar structure  of  the  heart,  or  by  its  effects  on  the  brain.  They  ex- 
plained also  many  of  the  phenomena  of  ordinary  fever  as  the  result  of 
heat  alone.  They  have  established  the  rational  and  now  generally- 
adopted  treatment  of  sunstroke  by  reduction  of  the  body-tempera- 
ture ;  and  the  same  method  is  now  beginning  to  be  appreciated  and 
employed  in  ordinary  fever,  f 

The  same  observer,  with  Dr.  Formad,  has  made  important  experi- 
ments on  the  nature  of  diphtheria,  and  when  we  learn,  as  we  probably 
soon  shall,  how  to  deal  writh  the  microscopic  forms  of  life  which  seem 
to  be  its  cause,  it  will  not  be  too  much  to  hope  that  we  may  be  able 
to  cope  far  more  successfully  with  a  disease  now  desolating  so  many 
homes. 

In  India  alone  twenty  thousand  human  beings  die  annually  from 
snake-bite,  J  and  as  yet  no  antidote  has  been  discovered.  How  can  we 
search  intelligently  for  an  antidote  until  we  know  accurately  the  effects 
of  the  poison  ?  This  can  not  be  studied  on  man  ;  we  must  resort  to 
animals,  or  else  let  the  holocaust  go  on.  Accordingly,  Dr.  T.  Lauder 
Brunton  began  such  a  series  of  experiments  in  London,  but  was 
stopped  by  the  stringent  anti-vivisection  laws  there  in  force.    But  Drs. 

*  Wood,  "Thermic  Fever  or  Sunstroke,"  Philadelphia,  18*72. 

f  Eighteen  out  of  Wood's  experiments  were  on  the  general  effects  of  heat,  as  above 
alluded  to.     In  six  others  the  local  effects  of  heat  (135°  to  190°  Fahr.)  on  the  brain,  and 
in  four  others  the  local  effects  (up  to  140°  Fahr.)  on  the  nerves  were  studied  and  gave 
most  valuable  results,  entirely  and  evidently  unattainable  on  man. 
\  Fayrer,  '■  Thanatophidia  of  India,"  p.  32. 


10  OUR  RECENT  DEBTS    TO    VIVISECTION. 

Weir  Mitchell  and  Reichert,*  in  this  city,  have  recently  undertaken 
experiments  on  cobra  and  rattlesnake  venom,  the  cobra-poison  being 
furnished,  be  it  observed,  by  the  British  Government,  whose  own  laws 
have  prevented  investigations  for  the  benefit  of  its  own  subjects  !  The 
results  are  as  yet  only  partly  made  known,  but  they  have  been  brill- 
iantly successful  in  showing  that  there  are  two  poisons  in  such  venom, 
each  of  which  has  been  isolated  and  its  effects  studied.  The  first  step 
has  been  taken — the  poison  is  known.  Who  will  raise  a  finger  to  stop 
progress  toward  the  second — the  antidote  ?  Can  the  sacrifice  of  a  few 
score  of  animals  each  year  in  such  research  weigh  for  a  moment 
against  the  continuous  annual  sacrifice  of  twenty  thousand  human 
beings  ?  f 

The  modern  history  of  anaesthetics  is  also  of  interest.  To  say 
nothing  of  ether  and  chloroform,  whose  safer  use  Bert  has  investi- 
gated in  France,  nor  of  cocaine,  to  which  I  have  already  alluded,  let 
us  see  what  experiments  on  animals  have  shown  us  as  to  bromide  of 
ethyl — an  anaesthetic  lately  revived  in  surgery.  Its  revival  has  quickly 
been  followed  by  its  abandonment  on  account  of  the  frequent  sacrifice 
of  human  life — that  is  to  say,  experiments  on  human  beings  have 
proved  it  to  be  deadly.  Now,  Dr.  H.  C.  Wood,  \  soon  after  its  reintro- 
duction,  made  a  study  of  its  effects  on  animals,  and  showed  its  physio- 
logical dangers.  Had  his  warniugs  been  heeded,  not  a  few  human 
lives  would  have  been  saved. 

The  ideal  anaesthetic,  that  will  abolish  pain  without  abolishing  con- 
sciousness, and  do  so  without  danger,  is  yet  to  be  found.  Cocaine  is 
our  nearest  approach  to  it.  Now,  in  all  fairness  and  common  sense, 
would  it  be  real  kindness  or  real  cruelty  to  obstruct  the  search  for 
such  an  anaesthetic — a  search  which  will  surely  be  rewarded  by  suc- 
cess, but  which,  if  not  carried  on  by  experiments  on  animals,  must  be 
tried  by  deadly  experiments  upon  man,  or  else  be  hopelessly  given 
up? 

In  1869  I  was  called  to  see  a  man  suffering  to  the  last  degree  from 
an  abscess  in  the  loin.  I  recognized  the  fact  that  it  arose  from  the 
kidney,  but  I  was  powerless.     All  that  I  could  do  was  to  mitigate,  and 

•    *  "  Medical  News,"  April  2S,  1883. 

f  I  am  permitted  by  Rev.  R.  M.  Luther,  of  this  city,  to  state  the  following  fact  in 
illustration  of  the  practical  value  of  vivisection  in  snake-bite:  When  a  missionary  in 
Burmah,  he  and  his  brother-in-law,  Rev.  Mr.  Vinton  (two  missionary  viviscctionists  !),  made 
a  number  of  experiments  to  discover  an  antidote  to  the  poison  of  the  "brown  viper" — a 
snake  but  little  less  venomous  than  the  cobra.  They  found  a  substance  which  is  an 
antidote  in  about  sixty  per  cent  of  the  cases  if  applied  at  once.  Thah  Mway,  one  of  their 
native  preachers,  when  bitten  by  the  brown  viper,  had  some  of  this  antidote  with  him, 
and  by  its  use  his  life  was  saved  when  on  the  verge  of  death.  This  one  life  saved  has 
been  the  means  of  leading,  it  is  estimated,  two  thousand  Karens  to  embrace  Christianity. 
Was  not  this  one  life  worth  all  the  dogs  used  in  the  experiments — to  make  no  mention  of 
the  many  other  lives  that  will  be  saved  in  all  the  future  ? 

%  "Philadelphia  Medical  Times,"  April  24,  1SS0. 


OUR  RECENT  DEBTS    TO    VIVISECTION.  11 

that,  alas  !  but  little,  his  pitiless  sufferings  till  death  came  to  his  relief, 
after  nearly  a  year  of  untold  agony.  I  have  never  forgotten  his  suf- 
ferings, nor  the  sharp  pain  I  felt  when  I  learned,  two  years  later,  how 
I  might  possibly  have  saved  his  life.  In  the  very  same  year  (1869), 
Simon,  of  Heidelberg,*  had  a  woman  under  his  care  suffering  from 
urinary  fistuhe  from  a  healthy  kidney  —  a  surgical  accident  he  in 
vain  tried  to  heal.  That  she  could  live  with  one  kidney  had  the  other 
gradually  been  disabled  by  disease  was  probable,  for  one  such  diseased 
kidney  had  been  already  removed  three  times  when  mistaken  for 
ovarian  disease  ;  and  physiologists  had  often  removed  one  or  both 
kidneys  in  animals.  But  no  one  had  removed  a  healthy  kidney,  and 
then  studied  the  effects  on  the  remaining  kidney  and  upon  the  heart  ; 
no  one  had  tested  what  was  the  best  method  of  reaching  the  kidney, 
whether  by  the  abdomen  or  the  loin,  or  how  to  deal  with  its  capsule, 
or  the  haemorrhage,  or  the  surgical  after-effects.  Of  course,  Simon 
could  have  tried  the  experiment  on  his  patient,  blindly  trusting  to 
Providence  for  the  result.  But  he  chose  the  wiser  course.  He  studied 
the  previous  literature,  experimented  on  a  number  of  dogs  and  watched 
the  points  above  noted,  tried  various  methods  of  operating  upon  the 
dead  body,  and,  after  weighing  all  the  pros  and  cons,  deliberately  cut 
down  upon  the  kidney  of  his  patient  after  a  carefully  formulated 
plan,  not  by  the  abdomen,  but  through  the  loin,  and  saved  her  life. 
She  died  in  1877,  after  eight  years  of  healthy  life,  free  from  her  loath- 
some disorder. 

Now,  what  have  been  the  results  of  these  experiments  upon  a  few 
dogs  ?  One  hundred  and  ninety-eight  times  the  kidney  has  been  re- 
moved, and  105  human  lives  have  been  saved  ;  83  times  abscesses  in 
the  kidney  have  been  opened,  and  66  lives  saved  ;  17  times  stones 
have  been  removed  from  the  kidney  without  a  single  death — or,  in  all, 
in  the  last  fifteen  years,  298  operations,  and  188  human  lives  saved. 
Besides  this,  as  an  extension  of  the  operation  in  17  cases,  in  which  the 
kidney,  having  no  such  attachments  as  ought  to  anchor  it  in  place, 
was  floating  loosely  in  the  abdomen  and  a  source  of  severe  pain,  it 
has  been  cut  down  upon  and  sewed  fast  in  its  proper  place  ;  and  all  of 
these  patients  but  one  recovered. 

Looking  to  the  future,  when  not  hundreds  but  thousands  of  hu- 
man beings  will  enjoy  the  benefits  of  these  operations,  and  in  increasing 
percentages  of  recoveries,  are  not  the  sufferings  inflicted  on  these  few 
dogs  amply  justified  as  in  the  highest  sense  kind  and  humane  ?  f 

Not  long  since  Dr.  Ferrier,  of  London,  was  prosecuted  for  the 
alleged  performance  of  certain  experiments  on  the  brains  of  the  lower 
animals.  With  Fritsch,  Hitzig,  Goltz,  Yeo,  and  others,  he  had  de- 
stroyed or  galvanized  certain  limited  areas  of  the  brain  (and  it  must 

*  Simon,  "  Chirurgie  der  Nieren,"  18*71,  preface. 

-J-  Very  erroneous  views  prevail  as  to  the  sufferings  of  animals  from  experiments  upon 


12  OUR  RECENT  DEBTS   TO    VIVISECTION. 

not  be  forgotten  that  the  brain  is  wholly  without  the  sense  of  pain)r 
and  so  determined  the  exact  nervous  centers  for  certain  limited  groups 
of  muscles.  As  a  result  of  their  labors,  the  brain  is  now  mapped  out 
with  reasonable  accuracy,  so  that,  given  certain  hitherto  ill-undsrstood 
or  obscure  localized  symptoms,  we  can  now  say  that  there  is  certainly 
a  tumor,  an  abscess,  or  other  disease  in  precisely  this  or  that  locality. 
True,  we  can  doubtfully  infer  somewhat  of  the  same  from  the  cruel 
experiments  of  disease  on  man.  But  Nature's  experiments  are  rarely 
ever  limited  in  area  or  uncomplicated  ;  they  are  never  systematic  and 
exhaustive  ;  it  takes  years  to  collect  a  fair  number  of  her  clumsy  ex- 
periments, and  the  knowledge  is  diffused  through  many  minds  instead 
of  being  centered  in  one  that  will  systematize  the  results. 

Said  Ferrier,  a  year  ago,  in  the  Marshall  Hail  oration,  "  There  are 
already  signs  that  we  are  within  measurable  distance  of  the  successful 
treatment  by  surgery  of  some  of  the  most  distressing  and  otherwise 
hopeless  forms  of  intra-cranial  disease,  which  will  vie  with  the  splen- 
did achievements  of  abdominal  surgery." 

Note  the  fulfillment !  Last  fall,  within  a  year  of  the  foregoing 
prophecy,  a  man,  aged  twenty-five,  entered  the  London  Hospital  for 
Epilejjsy  and  Paralysis.*  From  the  symptoms,  which  I  need  not  de- 
tail, Dr.  Hughes  Bennett,  basing  his  conclusions  on  Ferrier's  experi- 
ments, diagnosticated  a  tumor  of  small  size  on  the  surface  of  the 
brain,  involving  the  center  of  motion  for  the  muscles  of  the  hand. 
On  November  15,  1884,  at  his  instance,  Mr.  Godlee  trephined  the 
skull  over  the  selected  spot,  and  a  quarter  of  an  inch  below  the  surface 
of  the  brain  found  a  tumor  as  big  as  a  walnut,  and  removed  it.  For 
three  weeks  the  man  did  well,  but  died  on  the  twenty-eighth  day  from 
blood-poisoning,  such  as  might  follow  any  operation,  especially  a  new 
one.  Macewen,  of  Glasgow,  f  has  similarly  trephined  a  woman,  the  vic- 
tim of  slow  paralysis  of  body  and  mind,  and  opened  an  abscess  a  little 
distance  below  the  surface,  letting  out  two  teaspoonf uls  of  jms,  and 
followed  by  entire  mental  and  physical  recovery. 

By  these  experiments  and  operations  a  wide  door  is  open  to  sur- 
gery in  the  treatment  of  diseases  within  the  skull — diseases  heretofore 
so  obscure  and  uncertain  that  we  have  hardly  dared  to  attack  them.. 
The  question  is  not  whether  death  or  recovery  followed  in  these  par- 

them.  Many  persons  suppose  that  "  vivisection  "  means  deliberate  "  cutting  up  "  of  an 
animal,  little  by  little,  till  not  enough  is  left  to  live.  So  far  is  this  from  the  truth,  that 
Professor  Gerald  Yeo,  from  the  actual  reports  of  vivisectionists  in  England  ("Fortnightly 
Review,"  March,  1S82),  estimates  that  of  cne  hundred  such  experiments,  there  arc: 

Absolutely  painless 75 

As  painful  as  vaccination 20 

As  painful  as  the  healing  of  a  wound 4 

As  painful  as  a  surgical  operation , 1 

Total 100 

*  "Medical  News,"  January  17,  1885.  \ Ibid.,  January  3,  1885. 


OUR  RECENT  DEBTS    TO    VIVISECTION.  13 

ticular  cases.  The  great,  the  startling,  the  encouraging  fact  is  that,, 
thanks  to  these  experiments,  we  can  now,  with  well-nigh  absolute  cer- 
tainty, diagnosticate,  and  with  the  greatest  accuracy  locate  such  dis- 
eases, and  therefore  reach  them  by  operation,  and  treat  them  success- 
fully. Would  that  I  had  been  born  twenty-five  years  later,  that  I 
might  enjoy  with  you  the  full  luxury  of  such  magnificent  life-saving,, 
health-giving  discoveries  ! 

It  is,  however,  by  the  experimental  study  of  the  effects  of  minute 
organisms — microbes,  as  they  are  now  called — that  some  of  the  latest 
and  most  remarkable  results  have  been  achieved.  The  labors  of  Koch, 
Pasteur,  Klein,  Cheyne,  Tommasi-Crudeli,  Wood,  Formad,  Sternberg, 
and  others,  are  now  known  even  to  the  daily  press.  Let  us  see  what 
they  have  done. 

It  is  but  three  years  since  Koch  announced  that  consumption  was 
caused  by  the  "bacillus  tuberculosis."  Later  he  has  studied  cholera 
and  found  the  "comma-bacillus,"  to  which  he  ascribes  that  dreaded 
disease.  In  spite  of  the  opposition  of  prominent  scientists,  his  views 
have  been  in  general  accepted,  and  seem  to  be  reasonable. 

The  method  of  experiment  is  simple,  though  difficult.  The  sus- 
pected expectoration  or  discharge  is  placed  in  a  suitable  soil,  and  after 
cultivation  some  of  this  growth  is  placed  in  another  culture-soil,  and 
so  on  till  generation  after  generation  is  produced,  the  violence  of  the 
poison  being  modified  by  each  culture.  A  small  portion  of  any  one  of 
these  cultivres  is  then  injected  under  the  skin  of  a  mouse  or  other  ani- 
mal, and  in  time  it  dies  or  is  killed,  and  the  results  are  verified  by  the 
post-mortem. 

So  exact  is  the  knowledge  in  tuberculosis  now  that  Koch  can  pre- 
dict almost  to  an  hour  when  the  mouse  will  die  of  consumption,  or  that 
it  will  escape,  according  to  the  culture  used. 

It  is  far  too  early  as  yet  to  say  that  these  studies  have  borne  the 
immense  practical  fruit  that  the  next  few  years  will  show  ;  but  they 
have  already  enabled  us  to  recognize  by  the  mici-oscope  doubtful  cases 
of  consumption  in  their  earlier  and  more  remediable  stages,  and  have 
made  certain  what  has  hitherto  been  only  a  probability — that  consump- 
tion is  distinctly  contagious. 

By  Gerlach's  experiments  on  animals  with  the  milk  from  tuber- 
cular cows,  also,  it  has  been  shown  that  consumption  may  be  con- 
tracted from  such  milk.  How  important  this  conclusion  is,  in  so 
universal  an  article  of  food  to  young  and  old,  I  need  not  do  aught 
than  state. 

The  experiments  of  Wood  and  Formad  on  diphtheria  I  have  already 
alluded  to.  Those  of  Tommasi-Crudeli  also  have  shown  that  probably 
the  poison  of  malaria  is  due  to  like  organisms,  while  a  large  number  of 
other  diseases  are  being  similarly  investigated. 

As  to  cholera,  the  classic  experiments  of  Thiersch,  in  1853,*  are  well 

*  John  Simon,  "Proceedings  International  Medical  Congress,"  London,  1SS1. 


14  OUR  RECENT  DEBTS    TO    VIVISECTION. 

known.  He  inoculated  fifty-six  mice  with  cholera-discharges.  Of 
these,  forty-four  sickened  and  fourteen  died  from  choleraic  diseases. 
In  the  same  year  two  water  companies  in  London  experimented  on 
500,000  human  beings,  one  of  them  inoculating  its  patrons  with  chol- 
■era-discharges  through  its  impure  water-supply.  This  one  sickened 
thousands  and  killed  3,476  human  beings,  most  of  whom  might  have 
■escaped  had  the  lessons  of  Thiersch's  fourteen  mice  been  heeded.  To 
ask  the  question,  which  was  the  more  cruel,  is  to  answer  it.* 

At  present  our  strenuous  efforts  are  all  in  one  direction — viz.,  to 
study  these  microbes  by  the  microscope,  by  clinical  observation,  and 
by  experiments  on  animals,  in  order  to  find  out  their  origin,  causes, 
growth,  and  effects,  and  to  discover  by  what  means  their  deadly  re- 
sults may  be  avoided,  or  by  what  remedies,  without  harm  to  the  patient, 
they  may  themselves  be  destroyed.  Evidently  these  studies  can  not 
be  tried  on  our  patients.  They  must  either  be  tried  on  animals  or  be 
abandoned. 

The  inoculation  experiments  of  modern  times  have  recently  borne 
rich  fruit  in  still  another  pestilential  disease — yellow  fever — wdiose 
ravages  in  this  country  are  fresh  in  our  minds.  November  10,  1884, 
M.  Bouley  reported  to  the  Paris  Academy  of  Sciences  f  that,  since  1880, 
M.  Freire,  of  Rio  Janeiro,  had  experimented  on  Guinea-pigs  with  the 
virus  of  yellow  fever,  and  believed  that  he  had  been  able  to  produce 
such  attenuation  of  the  virus  that  by  vaccination  he  could  secure  im- 
munity from  this  dreadful  scourge.  Following  the  experiments,  he  and 
Rabourgeon  tested  the  results  on  themselves,  some  students  of  medi- 
cine, and  employes.  Later  the  Emperor  Dom  Pedro  authorized  two 
hundred  wharf-laborers  to  be  inoculated.  All  these,  after  a  three 
days'  mild  attack,  remained  free  from  the  pestilence,  while  their  fel- 
low-laborers, similarly  exj)osed  to  the  fever,  were  dying  on  every  hand. 
If,  in  an  epidemic,  this  still  prove  true,  as  there  seems  every  proba- 
bility it  will,  from  the  five  hundred  lives  already  saved,  we  can  hardly 
estimate  either  the  medical  or  the  commercial  advantages  to  this  coun- 
try alone.  Is  this  cruelty  ?  Let  Norfolk,  and  Memphis,  and  Pensa- 
-cola,  and  New  Orleans  answer. 

We  are  all  familiar  now  with  the  numerous  deaths  from  eating 
pork  infested  with  trichina.     While  I  was  in  Beidin,  in  1865-'66,  a  ter- 

*  The  population  supplied  by  the  Southwark  and  Yauxkall  Company,  in  the  epidemic 
of  18tS-'49,  died  at  the  rate  of  US  in  each  10,000,  and,  in  that  of  1853-'54,  at  the  rate 
-of  130  per  10,000.  Those  supplied  by  the  Lambeth  Company  died  in  1848-'49  at  the 
rate  of  125  per  10,000,  but  having  improved  its  water  supply  meantime,  the  death-rate, 
in  1S53-'51,  fell  to  37  per  10,000. 

If  Thiersch  lived  in  England  to-day,  he  would  have  to  take  out  a  license  to  kill  his 
fourteen  mice  in  the  interests  of  humanity — a  license  possibly  refused,  or  only  to  be 
•obtained  after  the  most  vexatious  delays.  But  any  house-maid  might  torture  and  kill 
them  with  arsenic  or  phosphorus,  or  Thiersch  might  give  them  to  a  favorite  terrier  with- 
out the  slightest  interference,  provided  only  it  be  not  for  a  scientific  or  a  humane  object! 

f  "Medical  News,"  November  29,  18S4. 


OUR  RECENT  DEBTS    TO    VIVISECTION.  15 

rible  epidemic  of  the  then  new  disease  broke  out  at  Hedersleben,  a 
small  town  in  Prussian  Saxony.  I  well  remember  with  what  zeal  Vir- 
chow  and  his  assistants  immediately  investigated  the  disease,  inocu- 
lated animals  with  the  parasitic  worm,  studied  its  natural  history, 
found  out  that  heat  killed  it,  and  to-day,  as  a  result  of  these  and  other 
experiments,  we  all  know  how  to  avert  its  dangers  by  proper  cooking, 
or  to  avoid  it  altogether  by  the  microscope.  The  value  of  these  ex- 
periments, both  to  human  life  and  to  commerce,  you  know  even  from 
the  daily  papers. 

You  will  find  it  difficult  to  make  the  non-medical  public  understand 
— nay,  you  yourselves  as  yet  hardly  understand — the  enormous  ad- 
vance in  medicine  and  surgery  brought  about  by  recent  researches  on 
inflammation,  and  by  the  use  of  antiseptics.  My  own  professional  life 
only  covers  twenty -three  years,  yet  in  that  time  I  have  seen  our  knowl- 
edge of  inflammation  wholly  changed,  and  the  practice  of  surgery  so 
revolutionized  that  what  would  have  been  impossible  audacity  in  1862 
has  become  ordinary  practice  in  1885. 

It  would  seem  that  so  old  a  process  as  inflammation  would  long  ago 
have  been  known  through  and  through,  and  that  nothing  new  could 
be  adduced.  In  1851,  however,  Claude-Bernard,  by  a  slight  operation, 
divided  the  sympathetic  nerve  in  a  rabbit's  neck  and  showed  its  influ- 
ence on  the  caliber  of  the  blood-vessels.  In  1858  Virchow  published 
his  "Cellular  Pathology."  In  1867  Cohnheim  (Virchow's  "Archiv") 
published  his  studies  on  the  part  that  the  blood-cells  played  in  inflam- 
mation as  shown  in  the  frog,  followed  by  further  papers  by  Dr.  Nor- 
ris,  of  this  city,  Strieker,  Von  Recklinghausen,  Waldeyer,  and  many 
others.  Already  in  my  lectures  I  have  pointed  out  to  you  in  detail  the 
advances  made  by  these  studies,  both  in  theory  and  practice.  They 
have  brought  about  an  entire  reinvestigation  of  disease,  and  given  us 
wholly  new  knowledge  as  to  abscesses,  ulceration,  gangrene,  the  or- 
ganization of  clots  in  wounds,  and  after  operations  and  ligature  of 
blood-vessels  for  aneurism,  as  to  thrombosis,  and  embolism,  and  paral- 
ysis, and  apoplexy,  and  a  score  of  other  diseases  through  the  diagnosis 
and  treatment  of  which  now  runs  the  silver  thread  of  knowledge  in- 
stead of  ignorance. 

With  this  the  brilliant  results  of  the  antiseptic  system  have  joined 
to  give  us  a  new  surgery.  Sir  Joseph  Lister,  to  whom  we  chiefly  owe 
this  knowledge,  has  done  more  to  save  human  life  and  diminish  human 
suffering  than  any  other  man  of  the  last  fifty  years.  Had  he  only 
made  practicable  the  use  of  animal  ligatures,  it  would  have  been  an 
untold  boon,  the  value  of  which  can  only  be  appreciated  by  doctors  ; 
but  he  has  done  far  more,  he  has  founded  a  new  system  of  surgery. 
We  may  reject  the  spray  and  carbolic  acid,  but  the  surgical  world, 
regardless  of  details,  with  few  exceptions  follows  the  principles  upon 
which  his  method  is  founded  and  humanity  is  the  gainer,  by  the  nearly 
total  abolition  of  inflammation,  suppuration,  secondary  haemorrhage, 


16  OUE  RECENT  DEBTS    TO    VIVISECTION. 

Moocl-poisoning,  gangrene,  and  erysipelas,  as  sequels  of  accidents  and 
operations  ;  by  the  practicable  relief  from  suffering  and  death,  by  op- 
erations formerly  impossible  ;  by  rendering  amputations  and  compound 
fractures  safe  and  simple  instead  of  deadly.  Reflect  on  what  each  one 
of  these  brief  but  momentous  statements  means  ! 

But  we  have  by  no  means  reached  perfection.  Lister  himself,  no 
tyro,  but  the  great  master,  is  still  searching  for  further  improvements. 
But  when  lately  he  desired  to  make  some  experiments  on  animals,  still 
further  to  perfect  our  practice,  so  many  obstructions  were  thrown  in 
his  way  in  England  that  he  was  driven  to  Toulouse  to  pursue  his  hu- 
mane researches. 

I  bad  intended  also  to  speak  of  many  other  practical  benefits  to 
man  directly,  but  can  only  mention  such  important  matters  as  the  sur- 
gery of  the  thyroid  gland,  the  seat  of  goitre  ;  the  surgery  of  the  lungs, 
part  of  which  have  been  removed  ;  the  surgery  of  the  nerves,  removal 
of  the  entire  larynx,  the  remarkable  researches  of  late  years  as  to  the 
periosteum  in  the  reproduction  of  new  bone  after  removal  of  dead  or 
diseased  bone  ;  Bernard's  important  observations  as  to  diabetes  ; 
Brown-Sequard's  experiments  on  epilepsy,  the  modern  extraordinary 
advance  in  nearly  all  the  diseases  of  the  nervous  system,  and  a 
number  of  other  discoveries,  as  to  all  of  which  experiments  upon 
animals  have  added  largely  to  our  knowledge,  and  therefore  to  our 
means  of  diminishing  suffering  and  saving  human  life.  For  many 
of  these,  as  well  as  for  the  most  judicial  discussion  of  the  vivisec- 
tion question  I  have  yet  seen,  I  must  refer  you  to  that  remark- 
able book,  "•Physiological  Cruelty,"  written,  not  by  a  man,  but  a 
woman* 

I  had  also  intended  to  refer  in  detail  to  the  splendid  results  of  vivi- 
section in  relieving  the  sufferings  of  animals,  and  in  preventing  enor- 
mous pecuniary  loss  to  man.  We  are  only  beginning  to  see  that  vivi- 
section is  as  humane  to  animal  life  and  suffering  as  it  is  to  human,  and 
that  for  financial  reasons  as  well  as  humane  motives  it  is  of  the  utmost 
importance  to  the  State  that  such  diseases  as  cattle-plague,  splenic 
fever,  chicken-cholera,  swine-plague,  and  others,  should  be  eradicated. 
Vivisection  has  shown  us  how  this  may  be  done,  and  has  so  conferred 
upon  animals  too  the  boon  of  life  and  health.  For  all  this,  however,  I 
must  refer  you  to  the  recent  admirable  lecture  by  Professor  Robert 
Meade  Smith,  of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania. f 

One  subject,  however,  is  so  recent  and  of  such  interest,  both  to 
man  and  animals,  that  I  must  not  pass  it  over — I  mean  that  justly- 
dreaded  disease  hydrophobia.  Thanks  to  vivisection,  its  abolition  in 
the  near  future  seems  no  longer  to  be  a  matter  of  doubt. 

Within  the  last  three  years  Pasteur  has  announced  that,  by  passing 
the  virus  through  the  monkey,  he  has  been  able  to  protect  dogs  from 

*  Sec  also  the  just  issued  "  Life  and  Labors  of  Pasteur." 

f  Reprinted  from  the  ''Therapeutic  Gazette,"  November,  lS8-i. 


OUR  RECENT  DEBTS    TO    VIVISECTION.  17 

hydrophobia  by  vaccination  with  this  weakened  virus.  The  French 
Government  recently  appointed  an  eminent  scientific  commission  to 
report  on  the  alleged  discovery.*  Pasteur  furnished  them  with  23  vac- 
cinated dogs.  These  23,  and  19  others  unprotected,  were  all  inoculated 
from  rabid  animals.  Of  the  19  unprotected,  14  died.  Of  the  23  pro- 
tected dogs,  one  died  of  diarrhoea,  and  all  the  others  escaped.  It  has 
yet  to  be  tried  on  a  man  suffering  from  hydrophobia,  but,  should  our 
reasonable  hopes  be  realized,  what  a  boon  it  will  be  ! 

With  this  brief  summary  of  a  few  of  the  recent  practical  benefits 
from  vivisection,  I  must  .close.  I  have  given  you  only  ascertained 
facts  for  your  future  use  in  the  communities  in  which  you  may  settle. 
They  may  assist  you  in  forming  public  sentiment  on  a  basis  of  fact,  of 
reason,  and  of  common  sense.  The  sentiments  of  our  own  profession, 
so  constantly  and  so  conspicuously  humane,  are  always  against  inflict- 
ing pain  ;  but  if  in  yielding  to  sentiment  we  actually  increase  disease, 
and  pain,  and  death,  both  among  animals  and  men,  our  aversion  to 
present  pain  is  both  unwise  and  actually  cruel. 

In  conclusion,  let  me  wish  you  the  greatest  success  in  your  profes- 
sional life,  and  the  richest  blessings  of  our  kind  heavenly  Father. 
Farewell. 

*  "  Medical  News,"  August  30,  1884. 


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